Wednesday, 1 February 2012

Thoughts on a beknighted man

So, it's finally happened: Fred "the Shred" Goodwin has been stripped of his knighthood, to cheers and further vituperation from "the left". Some of the stuff I've read on twitter has been at least as offensive as any dole-bludger bashing I've ever read. Or indeed, written.

But let's have a look at the chronology of all this. Back in 2007, when RBS beat Barclays to the takeover of ABN Amro (which was effectively the deal that fucked RBS so hard that it will limp for the rest of its life) financial analysts were full of praise for Fred's hardball strategy. Even the notoriously milquetoast BBC said:

Barclays' failure to pull off the deal will inevitably raise question marks about its future strategy.

It was shortly after this that everything turned to shit, but at the time, everybody was impressed with Fred's perspicacity. He had made RBS the world's largest bank (by asset value) during his tenure. Now, you might well argue with the benefit of hindsight, but at the time, everybody was impressed.

He was knighted in 2004, by the Labour government, starring Ed Miliband, who is currently stroking himself into a coma at having convinced the dishfaced social democrat into revoking said knighthood. If he was that fucking outraged, why didn't the mongtarded fuckwit do something when he was actually in government?

Secondly, Fred's pension, which is now the target of such opprobrium from "the left" was agreed by Labour as part of getting him sacked and replaced by Stephen Hester, another name some of you might recognise as a bloke who is getting royally fucked over thanks to chiselling whingeing from "the left".

So, Labour, having agreed that Fred was a hero, knighted him, agreed to his pension to get rid of him and struck a deal with his replacement. Immediately they were out of power, they started using both of these people that they had been so generous to while in power, as whipping boys and ways to froth up public resentment (that didn't exist among Labour voters when they were in power, obviously!)

If the massively-foreheaded douchebag actually was a Tory, he would have turned around in the face of all this public fauxtrage and said: "These deals were agreed by Labour when they were in government and I can't understand why they're complaining now." And continued to honour the deals.

If he was an astute politician, he would have said: "These deals were a bad deal done by Labour and I'm calling time on them behalf of the hard-working taxpayer." At least that way, he would have still been a massive cunt, but he would have been able to garner some plaudits for his actions.

But because he's a slippery social democrat weasel who has nothing more in mind than to one day be able to say "I was Prime Minister, you know!" he has opted for the weakest possible option: to bow to manufactured outrage and use it as a diversion for some of his other unprincipled actions. It speaks volumes that the only thieving shit who is claiming any victory over this is Ed fucking Miliband!

If this sorry saga doesn't make you question your party allegiances and doesn't make you see why I can't tell the difference between any of the major political parties, then you are definitely part of the problem.

And if this little fiasco doesn't prevent any future businessman from running a state-owned business, then they really are stupid enough to deserve everything they get.